I cannot recall just when I first noticed the difference in Cassandra. Perhaps I had been too happy myself to realize what was happening to her. The breezy tinsel of the city had sparkled very brightly for Cassie, but, it had burned itself out in the effort. After a time, it lost its fascination. In the beginning, I tried to tell myself that I was imagining things, but, gradually, I felt the happy freedom slipping away from us. Cassandra’s smiles grew scarcer by the day; there was an infinitely sad far-away look that kept stealing into her eyes at the most unexpected moments. I began to imagine that she had grown pale. I watched her more closely than ever. An end of it came one evening late in August.
I found Cassandra alone on the night-cooled terrace of our apartment, staring Eastward across the summer-choked city. When I touched her shoulders she gave a little start, then smiled sadly.
“Can you smell it, darling?” she murmured wistfully, after a moment.
“What?”
“The sea…
In that moment, I think I had a sudden vision of the scabrous puffed face I had fought desperately to forget, and, floating evilly in the night air, I sensed a wisp of the decayed effluvia of Heath House. I struggled to keep my voice steady.
“What’re you getting at, Cassie?”
Cassandra smiled again.
“Can’t fool my doctor, can I?” Her voice was soft. “Darling…. Would you mind terribly if we went back… to Kalesmouth… the Heath House?”
Strangely enough, all I felt for an instant was a sensation of relief. I had been waiting for that question all along; I was almost glad the waiting was over. I took Cassandra into my arms and kissed the tip of her nose. I wanted to sound careless and bright. I told her, if she really wanted to go back, there was nothing I would like better. Cassie smiled, nestling her head against my shoulder. As we stood there, looking into the darkness above the winking lights of the buildings, a cold shudder ran through me. I wanted to say it was wrong; we couldn’t go back. I said nothing. Quietly, hypnotic and shrill, a familiar, odious threnody chortled inland from the distant Atlantic. “… lovers all to the Goddess of the Green and Swirling Void…. Come away, to Zoth Syra! Come away!” I wondered if Cassandra could hear it. I prayed that she couldn’t.
I am not certain of what I expected upon our return to Heath House. I could not forget the puling, nauseous horrors we had left behind; the stench of a scaly corpse seemed never to leave my nostrils. I remember my hands sweating on the wheel as I tooled our car across the long bridge that connected Kalesmouth Strand with the mainland; early-morning fog seemed to close in behind us, shutting us off from reality. The baleful finger of the solitary macadam road that led to Heath House pointed with terrible certainty to the steely expanse of the sea.
However, the change in Cassandra heartened me, dispelling somewhat my uneasy premonitions. Already, her complexion had returned to its former warmth and beauty; her laughter rippled softly at some weak joke I had made, and the ebony cloak of her hair was rich and alive in the sea breeze. Our homecoming was much more pleasant and prosaic than I had dared hope it would be; it gave no trembling portent of the icy, sea-brined evil that was to stalk our future hours in the malevolent house. Only the sea chuckled expectantly in the lonely cove near Lazarus Heath’s tomb.
It is impossible to trace the stages by which I became jealous of Heath House; there was something subtle and cruel about the change that overtook me after the first days and nights on the barren point of land that meant so much to Cassandra. At the start, I managed to convince myself that I was happy — happy because Cassie seemed to be so, for the first time in months. I even felt something like an uneasy affection for the old place, because it made Cassandra what I wanted her to be — full of a rich, wild life, touched with the mysterious charm that had first attracted me.
We began to refurnish and remodel the house; the mundane clang of workmen’s saws and hammers, the earthly smell of turpentine and white lead, seemed to breathe a freshness into the foul, antiquated halls and chambers. I told myself it was just another charming old house where people could be happy if only they tried hard enough; but, all the time, a new whispering voice within me, clamored for attention. I knew I was losing Cassandra to a past of which I had not been a part; Heath House was reclaiming her.
Cassandra herself seemed to notice no change in our relationship; she was gentle and full of a soft tenderness toward me, and still, I had the terrible feeling that a barrier was rising between us, day by day, second by second. Cassie took to a habit that roused uneasy memories in me; any hour of the day or night, she would be seized by an urge to walk quickly, unseeing, along the lashing edge of the sea. They were not the leisurely wanderings we had known in the past; it was as though Cassandra were trying to get somewhere, trying, unconsciously, to reach something.
Once or twice I mentioned the habit, but she only smiled remotely and said there was no harm in a stroll by the seaside, was there? I had no answer. I could not tell her of the cold unprofessional, unreasoning fear that had begun to haunt me. We went on with our repairs of Heath House, and gradually, brightened by chintzes and restored tapestries, filled with usable period furniture, it became livable. We had finished all of it, save the library; it was our plan to make this into a study, in which I might work on the book I planned to do on brain surgery. We never remodeled the library. I saw the inside of that abhorred chamber only once after the night Cassandra locked the panelled door and made me promise not to ask for the key. I wish I had never seen it at all.
That evening a bulwark of leaden clouds swung ponderously inland from the sea; a chilled late-October wind sifted beneath the imminent storm, swirling the sand in tiny puffs along Kalesmouth beach. By the tang of salt in the air, and the reticent anger of the surf, the Northeast was going to blow us a big one. I quickened my pace, walking home from the store; a dearth of incident had lulled me into uncertain forgetfulness, and, at that moment, I was almost pleased with the prospect of the evening ahead of me. Early in the afternoon, I had told Cassie tonight might be as good a time as any to go over the library, gleaning the useless chaff from the hit-and-miss collection that had been her father’s. Now, with a storm brewing, the idea of going through the books and effects of my mysterious father-in-law fascinated me. The biting wind and glowering ceiling of sky seemed to me a final atmospheric touch. I wondered if the spell of Heath House had begun to claim me as well.
The moment I saw her, I knew that something had gone wrong. There was a strange, jade-like pallor under Cassandra’s skin, and her eyes wouldn’t meet mine. Once or twice during our quiet dinner, she laughed, but the laughter echoed hollowly. Thunder had begun to shudder malignantly far out at sea. A finger of lightning shattered the darkness and our storage-battery lights pulsed anxiously. I saw Cassandra start and tip over her wine glass; the port spread like an oozing bloodstain on the Madeira linen. I looked at my plate, pretending not to notice her extraordinary nervousness.
“I’ve been looking forward to tonight,” I said.
“Looking forward, darling?” That false-brittle smile was in Cassandra’s voice.
“Yes… I’ve always wanted to go through those fabulous books…